Diablo 2 – Mastery Guide

Returning to our beloved Diablo 2, has brought with it many new teachings & insights. And it is only right to share, that which I have now learnt. This Diablo 2 Guide is the go to resource for all d2 singleplayer related resources, covering an extensive list of tips, strategies, resources, software, mods, builds and items.

Tips & Commands

Simple Commands That Will Make Your Life Easier

Shift + Right click on scrolls and potions while at the shop to fill up your entire tomb or belt of that particular item.

Shift + Left click on potions in your inventory to auto-place them into your belt.

Shift + numbers 1-4 to give your Mercenary a potion from your belt

/nopickup and you will not pickup items, unless you are holding alt. Ideal for melee characters/builds

/players (1-8) to increase the difficulty of the game in singleplayer while increasing, exp & drop rate (more on this later).

Dont Be Greedy

Counter intuitive, but check this out. You never need to pickup coins, especially during the earlier levels. This saves you a huge deal of time in the long run and you end up leveling and progressing through the acts/levels much quicker. By simply learning what items are valuable you can very quickly increase the size of your stash, without running around like a peasant. Early level items to pickup are: throwing knives, strangling gas/fulmination potion, some blues, golds and uniques. Magic items such as charms, rings and amulets sell well regardless of stats.

Once you’ve overcome the early level poverty, pay attention to the item values and you will no longer have a money flow issue. Well, unless you can’t control yourself when it comes to gambling. Decent drops sell for 10k+ to vendors and only pickup large stacks (around 1k+ mark) from Elite Mobs/Bosses.

Open Chests & Break Jars

Regardless of what stage or difficulty you’re playing at, taking the time to open chests, look under rocks and break jars is very important. 40-50% of your magical item drops will be found in these hidden objects. Even more important are those that are near elite mobs and bosses.

Learn Your Runewords & Recipes

Initially an overwhelming task. Getting Acquainted with the Runeswords and Recipes will be part of the process of being geared well for high difficulties (Nightmare & Hell) and surpassing in stats & skills to overcome your enemies. Knowing some of the basic early level Runewords will help out greatly early on.

Make Use of Quest Bonuses

Quest rewards can become very useful if used correctly and can make things much simpler at times. For example, I managed to get this from a Act2 Perfect Falcon Mask using the Act I: Quest 5: Tools of the Trade reward that I had saved up.

Understand Breakpoints

Explaining the technical side of breakpoints is difficult and unnecessary. All you need to know is that they are different for different classes/damage types. Meaning each class has its own set of unique breakpoints that need to be understood by the player aiming to maximise their gear and potential. They apply to the following values: Faster Block Rate, Faster Cast Rate, Faster Hit Recovery and Increased Attack Speed.

Example: the points needed for a Lightening Sorceress to go from Level 12 (@117 points) Fast Cast Rate to the next @194 points, leaves a gab of 77 points. Which means if your gear is taking you to a hypothetical 187 points, you are failing to hit the next level and therefore wasting your stats. Read more about Breakpoints here.

Damage Resistance

The other key thing to keep in mind, is the priority given to the damage resistances. The general rule of thumbs is Lightening > Fire > Cold > Poison, Lightning being the highest due to it hitting the highest. Each act has its main damage type and your build or class will have its own weaknesses to consider. Example: playing a melee would mean that you’d need to prioritise cold damage resistance more due to the attack speed reduction of freeze effects.

Bonus Tips from Diablo 2 Elder

Tools of the Trade rewards should be saved for later in the game. The item is tagged to your char level so if you use it at 80 you will get amazing level 80 items instead of a low-level items you will move on from quickly.

Skip optional areas (typically the dungeons and caves like the Swampy Pit in Act 3). Unless you need the level, it’s best just to skip it as you will level up normally in the story.

In Hell difficulty, some of these “useless areas” turn into the best places to farm, such as The Pit in the Tamoe Highlands. These areas are ‘level 85’ areas, which gives access to the best drops when magic finding.

The Countess drops more runes on players 1, so farm her @ P1.

Chests have better drops when you’re on a higher players difficulty. The Hell difficulty Lower Kurast superchests are arguably the best place in the game to find high runes, especially if your character can consistently run P8.

Leveling

Quicker Leveling In Singleplayer

Leveling in singleplayer was a pain during the noob days and one reason I always went for the Battle.net games. However, after learning about the /players 8 command which simultaneously increases monster difficulty, exp gain and drop rate. Leveling has become a breeze.

It is quite common to hit level 20 by the time you finish Act I. Not to mention you’ll be better geared because of the increase in drop rates and have a stronger build. Only the best builds can move through the /players 8 (hard mode) effortlessly so plan ahead and keep your wits about you. Otherwise try raising difficulty to /players 3, 5 or 7 to still get drop rate bonus.

Mercenaries

The go to Mercenaries seem to be the Act II ones due to their useful Auras (Pray, Defiance & Might). However, each Mercenary can still be utilised to cover for the weaknesses of your build and should be chosen based on this factor as you advance and improve on your strategic thinking.
Resources to checkout are:General Mercenary StatsExtensive Mercenary Guide

Character Guide

Don’t go a certain class, because of a build. Choose your class based on their playstyle and find the best build for what you want to achieve. All classes are powerful when speced/geared correctly and will have at least one variation that will enable them to play on /players 8, Nightmare & Hell difficulty.

The most viable classes for self-funded Singleplayer characters seem to be; the Paladin, Sorcerer, Assassin, Amazon and Necromancer. But this does not mean that the others cannot and will not be capable. We have yet to hit the limits of the capabilities of classes/builds and a little curiosity and experimentation might leads us to a new generation of playstyles.

Diablo 2 Builds

This is something that I am slowly working out for myself. Attaining variations of different class builds is quite easy to achieve. However, assuming you want to play Singleplayer and want to self-fund your character and also play through all three difficulties. These are the builds that I hear can achieve this result:

Summon Necromancer

Duel Element Sorceress

Zealot Paladin

Trapsin Assassin

Javazon Amazon

I’m currently experimenting and working on my own builds. These solutions were based on the help of the Diablo 2 Reddit and Facebook community. So do join if you are interesting in being in touch with others with similar interest. Also watching LLama for is speedrun self-funded characters will probably teach you a few things.

Crafting & Runewords

Crafting

It is important to know thy cooking recipes. Something I am just getting to understand myself. Checkout these resources:

Runewords

This part is probably my favourite thing right now.. Learning about Runewords and the benefits that the items can provide is really exciting and really adds to the replayability of the game. The ingrediants of Runewords basically come down to having the correct item, with the right amount of slots and the needed runes.

Mods & Software

Diablo 2 is now almost two decade old and these mods can help.

Hero Editor – Which still works with the latest versions of the game.MultiRes – Increase the resolutions offered by the game.PlugY – A game variation that provides you with a shared and expandable stash.GoMule – Allows items to be stored and transferred between singleplayer.Runeword App – Gives you real time information on all that you need to know.

News & Updates

Conclusion

Look, playing the game so many years after its best years is a love affair and having others to share and experience that with just makes it way more enjoyable.
Make sure join the Diablo 2 Facebook and Reddit community.